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B.C. Lions looking for some good returns

B.C. Lions' quarterback Travis Lulay, right, hands off the ball to Tim Brown, during first quarter CFL football action against the Calgary Stampeders in Calgary on June 28, 2013. It's only the second week of the CFL season but already there is a sense of urgency among the B.C. Lions.Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

VANCOUVER — Korey Williams wears No. 8 and Tim Brown No. 7 but, collectively, they scored a five in the B.C. Lions’ opening two games of the 2013 Canadian Football League season.

Fresh talent, fast track but same result, Williams was no more effective last Thursday against the Toronto Argonauts at BC Place than Brown was six days earlier in the season opener in Calgary.

The 2012 West Division special teams player of the year, Brown probed here, he probed there but couldn’t bust a long kick or punt return against the Stampeders in the June 28 game at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium.

Williams got the assignment July 4 against the Argos while Brown was scratched, but the rookie did more retreating than wiggling and juking. In 12 touches, Williams totalled a mere 55 yards. Brown had 136 yards on 11 touches the week before.

Passable on offence, dominant on defence and apparently lost in their return game, the Lions seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in practice Monday trying to work on achieving better field position. Superior special teams play is said to represent one-third of the winning equation in football, but the Lions are leaning more toward inferior than superior after the first two games.

“It’s not a concern, but it’s one of the areas where we need to get better,” head coach Mike Benevides said. “(Monday) was a good day to put the pads on and get more physical, to get more speed and tempo on the punt and kick return game. We’ll continue to add more work as we go through the week. It’s definitely an area we need to work on.”

Williams, a rookie from the Indoor Football League, the same circuit that graduated Brown to the CFL two years earlier, looked as if he would instantly make life hell for cover teams when he had a 105-yard return for a touchdown in the first pre-season game, June 14 in Calgary.

It looked too easy, and it was. Blowing past scrubs in a vanilla-flavoured game is one thing. Circumnavigating around tacklers in a game of consequence is another. “Guys play a lot faster than they did in the pre-season,” Williams explained. “But then, we did all of our assignments in the pre-season game, and we scored.

“It’s the same thing in a regular-season game. If we do all of our assignments, we’ll score. Whether it’s pre-season or regular season, you still have to make the same moves and cuts.”

Williams did concede, however, that he did too much east-west running on his eight punt returns in the Toronto game. He totalled a mere 18 yards. His singular best effort was 10 yards, meaning he advanced the ball just eight yards in seven other attempts.

“On some of the punt returns, I didn’t turn the ball upfield as much as I should have,” Williams said. “I was trying to swing it wide. They are telling me to get it upfield faster.”

Football is a game of move and countermove. Brown was part of the most recent chess game. He was parked, Williams played, and the humble, team-committed Brown tried to think of it as a tactical move by the coaching staff and not an indication that the torch is being passed to another returner.

“It’s the same thing we go through every year,” Brown said. “It’s getting the blockers to trust us and getting us to trust them. It’s like every six months you have to tune up a car. That’s all it is. We’re trying to tune it up in practice this week to get it going.”

Brown is more quick than he is fast; Williams is more sudden and instinctual. But whoever gets the call Saturday in Edmonton, he’ll need holes and seams to materialize because a returner can’t do it alone.

“We haven’t been giving our returners an opportunity to get going,” said special teamer Paris Jackson. “We’ve (blockers) been a little too passive. We’ve got to be more engaged, more physical. We’ve got two great returners, but we haven’t been giving our guys chances to hit home runs.”